Outplayed, now outcast

Some of the Chargers’ poor and ignorant play in yesterday’s divisional playoff debacle against the New York Jets will be blamed on the bye week, on not having played a real, honest-to-goodness football game since Christmas Day in Tennessee, on the layer of rust provided by inactivity. And that would be a mountain of manure that belongs in Tibet.

“No, that’s what everyone is going to say, because it’s the easy thing to write about,” said quarterback Philip Rivers, who joined several of his teammates in the Bad Game Room. “But we just didn’t play well enough to win. They outplayed us.”

And, please, don’t say the Jets were overlooked. Anybody who overlooks a playoff team was a lookout at Pearl Harbor.

It was more like gag-reflex corrosion, and the Good Ship San Diego, its engine sputtering and rudder broken, finally had its hull open up and it sank without so much of a list. Or, really, a trace of what it had been, the pride of the fleet.

The Chargers’ 17-14 loss to the Jets before the largest audience to watch the team play in Qualcomm Stadium has to rank up there with the greatest choke jobs in franchise history, and that covers some serious gagging: December 1979 against the Oilers, January 2005 against the Jets and January 2007 against the Patriots.

The Chargers may be digging stuff out of their necks up to training camp. We weren’t allowed in the locker room in the first few minutes following this thing, but we guessed head coach Norv Turner handed out several game nooses, and hopefully he kept one for himself.

All-Pro kicker Nate Kaeding entered the game having made 69 consecutive field goals from 40 yards in. He missed a 57-yarder on the last play of the first half. Very excusable. But he also misfired a 36-yarder and a 40-yarder. Despite everything else that went on, well, do the arithmetic. He makes those and he’s on his way to Indy next week for the AFC Championship Game.

“I didn’t kick it between the uprights,” Kaeding said.

Rarely has an NFL team entered the postseason with more going for it. San Diego had won 11 games in a row — not many clubs have done that — and it looked the part of a champion. The Chargers were healthy and rolling. They were doing and saying all the right things. And they were home, before an assembly of 69,498.

Rust easily can be shaken off. There is no accounting for this team being outsmarted, outcoached, outplayed, outhustled, outrun, out-tackled and obviously outplayed by a New York team that, even in victory, could in no way be considered their superior.

The Jets played just well enough. Congratulations to them. But they stepped up to the open bar at Club Asphyxiation. Even the appetizers were on the house. New York was there to be had, especially early on — the Jets went the first 21-plus minutes without a first down and yet trailed just 7-0 — but the visitors didn’t screw things up.